Riding In Cars With Thieves
by hamalaka
Summary: Nate catches Parker about to do something rash.


**Author's Note:** This came from a prompt from someone on Tumblr asking for a fic focusing on the father/daughter type relationship between Nate and Parker. Set in season 4, right after the events of _The Grave Danger Job. _It's slightly AU in the sense that the team didn't go drink together after the events of the episode. But the story more or less still fits, if you squint.

**The usual disclaimers:** I didn't create nor do I own the characters.

* * *

><p>"Parker, what are you doing in here?" Nate asked, his hand on the door to his apartment. She looked up at him with wide eyes, the proverbial kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Except this was a thief with her hand caught in a box of cereal.<p>

He sighed, it had been a long day, and he didn't have any energy left for Parker's antics. He entered the apartment, tripping over a duffel bag he didn't remember leaving there and crossed the living room, making his way toward the staircase. She seemed to have realized that he had opted to ignore her because she went back to digging around in the cereal box. It wasn't until he had one foot on the staircase that he spared her another glance and it was then that he saw the large wad of cash that she had pulled out and placed on the counter next to several other stacks just like it.

He froze, and his brain started doing its whirring thing, putting pieces together without him even telling it to. The stacks of cash on the counter, the duffel he tripped over in the entryway. Her demeanor with the rest of them at the bar earlier had been increasingly quiet. Not that any of them were a regular barrel of laughs, they were all too shaken from the events of the day. But they had at least attempted to create a sense of normalcy in their interactions. Hardison had made joke after joke at his own expense, Eliot had laughed too often and too loudly. Sophie had jumped up to refill Hardison's orange soda whenever it had gotten even the least bit empty. Nate had drank too much, of course. Maybe if he hadn't he would have noticed Parker shrinking in on herself as the night wore on, or the way she wouldn't look at Hardison. Or the formal way she had said goodbye to each of them before she scampered home. Well he had noticed, but he hadn't known what to make of it all until this very moment, when it all clicked.

"Parker, are you running?"

She stopped mid-stride on her way out of the kitchen, her emergency stash of cash clasped in her hands. He stepped in front of her and she dropped into a defensive stance, her eyes sizing him up, ready to take him down if he tried to stop her. Whoa, this was not something he wanted to get into. He held up his hands. "Hey, it's okay. Just . . . let me give you a ride to the airport."

She cocked her head, her eyes narrowing, "You're drunk."

"Technically, I was drunk four hours ago, now I'm just hungover."

She stared at him.

"Come on," he said, gesturing towards the door, "Let me drive you. What were you going to do, steal a car?" And he shook his head, of course she was going to steal a car. Probably his car, due to the ease of access and the fact that she knew he wouldn't report it to the police. He watched her shift back and forth on her feet and he wondered if she was deciding whether or not it was easier to just knock him out, take his car keys, and go. He hoped if she was going to do it she'd use the taser, he'd much prefer it over a knock on the head.

But instead she just shrugged and said, "Okay."

* * *

><p>Nate stuck her duffel bag in the backseat of the car and maneuvered the black sedan out of the parking garage. He had a thirty minute drive to the airport to talk her off this ledge, or else he would have three very angry people to deal with tomorrow. He drove the speed limit on the empty streets, stopping at every yellow light no matter where he was in the intersection when it changed. Part of it was a stalling tactic, to give him more time to figure out what to say, but part of it was that he wasn't quite as sober as he originally thought he was, and he didn't want to give a cop any excuse to pull them over.<p>

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Parker being Parker, didn't feel the need to answer questions if she didn't want to, so she just stared out the passenger side window.

"Where do you think you'll go?"

He knew she wouldn't answer that one.

"I hear Mexico City has some really great museums. You speak Spanish right?"

"Sí," she said to the window.

"Or Montreal? It's been years since I've been there, but I remember it was lovely. Except they all speak French. You don't speak French, do you?"

"Bien sûr que je fais, branleur."

He wasn't expecting the rapid French to come out of her mouth. His French was arguably rusty, since he hadn't studied it since college, and he didn't catch what she said. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised at this point, she was always surprising them with some skill they didn't know she had. He couldn't help but smile, it was so, Parker.

"Is this about Hardison?" he said gently.

Silence.

"And what happened to him?" Nate was back in that graveyard from this afternoon, feeling that terror, that mind-numbing-gut-clenching terror that he would have the bury someone else that he cared about. Those minutes hiding behind the headstones while Hardison was suffocating five feet away were some of the longest minutes in his life.

"Parker, you know he's okay, right?" he said, pulling onto the highway.

"This time," she mumbled so quietly he almost missed it. Nate was remembering the relief that washed over him when they opened that coffin and Hardison climbed out, shaken but unharmed. It had been like a physical weight lifted off his chest, lifted off all of their chests. But when he had looked at Parker's face, the terror was still there, even after she saw that he was unscathed. He hadn't known how she would react when they saved him, but he hadn't expected for her to walk off, looking like she was going to faint.

Nate tried to choose his words carefully, "You're scared because you care about him, and you know someday he'll die, and because of what we do, that someday will be sooner rather than later?"

Silence again, but out of the corner of his eye he saw her nod. She was staring down at her lap now, twisting the seatbelt in her fingers.

"It's not just him, it's all of you," she said, and Nate felt surprisingly touched. "It was just better when I was on my own, so . . ." She shrugged.

"Better, or simpler?"

"Simpler, I guess."

"Don't you think that's being a little selfish? Don't you care how you leaving is going to affect the team?" Nate spared a glance at her, she seemed to shrink in the seat, wrapping her arms around herself.

"You can get another thief. You guys deserve someone better, more normal. Hardison deserves someone normal."

Nate took a deep breath in, most days he didn't want to imagine the things that had happened to Parker to make her the way she was. Heaven knows his own childhood wasn't exactly normal, and his relationship with his father was, complicated at best. But his mother had always made him feel loved. He had always known where he would sleep that night, and when his next meal would be. He had never had to worry that any mistake he made would lead to him being kicked out or worse. That kind of environment can do a number on a person's self-worth. And Nate wondered if that was why Parker always seemed to be practicing her craft. Even on their days off she was constantly picking at spare locks, or memorizing security schematics. Nate had always assumed it was because she was just a bit more obsessive than the rest of them, well, except for maybe him. But now Nate could see that she was trying desperately to make herself valuable to the team, to make herself irreplaceable.

Nate wished, not for the first time tonight, that Sophie was here instead of him. Her skillset of being able to tell people exactly what they needed to hear was definitely something that Parker could use right now. Unfortunately, she was stuck with him.

"Parker, I . . ." and he paused, unsure of how to continue. "You're right, we could always get another thief. Thieves are a dime a dozen, they practically grow on trees."

He could see her shoot him a glare, but he kept his eyes on the empty highway.

"But do you know what doesn't grow on trees? Parkers." He felt a little bit like a parent talking to an unsure child, and he felt a twinge in his stomach when he thought about all the conversations he wouldn't have with Sam, and a similar twinge when he thought about all conversations people from Parker's childhood failed to have with her. "_You_ matter. And not just because you can crack a Glen Reader F1200 in thirty seconds."

"Twenty-four seconds."

"Right, twenty-four seconds. But it's not just about that stuff. Who else can keep Eliot from taking himself too seriously, and keep Hardison on his toes, and make Sophie laugh her real laugh, even if just for a moment?"

"And point out when you're getting creepily obsessed."

"I am not obs—," he cleared his throat, "It's not important. Anyway, we don't want another thief on our team, Parker. We want you."

When he glanced at her again, she actually smiled at him, and part of him relaxed a little. Maybe this would all end okay after all. "So can I turn around now?"

Her smile faded, "No."

"No?"

"It's not just about that."

Nate thought back on everything that she had said so far and remembered that this all started because Hardison almost died today. She wasn't only afraid that they didn't need her, she was also afraid of how much she had come to need them.

"Nate, if you could . . ." She seemed unsure of what she was about to say. "If you had the option, to go back in time and well . . . erase Sam, make it so he was never born, you never knew him and you never had to lose him, would you do it?"

Nate let his breath out in a whoosh. He had to bite down on his tongue to keep from snapping at her, his first instinct whenever someone brought up Sam. It was a good question. Would he do it? Erase all the pain and longing that had plagued him for the last six years?

"No," he said, surprised at the certainty in his own voice.

"No?" she sounded dubious.

"No," he said again. "You've got to take the good along with the bad, that's what it means to love somebody. Every relationship, whether it be father and son, friends, lovers, every relationship eventually ends. And no matter how painful or . . ." He swallowed hard against a lump in his throat, "premature that ending is, it doesn't negate the good times you had together. You can't let fear of losing somebody keep you from loving them. That's no way to live."

Nate knew he was venturing into the realm of hypocrisy here but this was about her issues, not his. "And besides, I think it's too late for you, Parker."

Her had snapped towards him, "What do you mean?"

He didn't want to admit that he had heard everything she had said over the comms this afternoon_. Do you hear me, Alec? I need you!_ From Parker that kind of statement was basically a declaration of love. "Do you really think at this point that running away from Hardison and the rest of us is not going to be excruciatingly painful? Maybe even unbearable?"

Nate let her silence stretch on this time, wanting to give her a chance to really think about what cutting them out of her life would be like for her. He counted the mile markers as they went by. Nine-tenths of a mile passed before she spoke again, simply saying, "No."

"No, what?" he asked.

"No, I don't think I can bear it," her voice sounded guilty, almost as if she was admitting something shameful.

"That's good, Parker. That's a good thing."

"It's scary."

"All the best things in life are scary, right? Like jumping off buildings."

She smiled again, "That's like what Sophie said."

"Well if Sophie said it, then it must be true," Nate said, and he smiled, thinking that Sophie would be pretty proud of him if she was here. "So . . . can I turn around now?"

She took and deep breath and let it all out in a shaky huff, "Uh huh."

"Really?"

She nodded.

"All right, that's what I want to hear," he said and took the upcoming exit. They were just about halfway to the airport which meant only fifteen minutes or so until he was home and in bed. He rubbed his eyes tiredly as he waited at the stoplight to turn onto the highway entrance ramp heading back home. Parker yawned loudly next to him, and a moment later he found himself yawning too. She smiled for a moment, looking more like her old self, and then her face got serious again.

"Eliot will take care of us, right?" she asked.

"Of course, that's his job," Nate said. "And you know how seriously he takes his job."

She nodded, apparently comforted. Nate let her have the comfort, not wanting to ruin it with all the scenarios that run through his head. The plan M's and R's and W's, where Eliot doesn't move fast enough, where Nate has to plan a contingency to get only four of them out alive, or three, or less. Those are the thoughts of a mastermind, the thoughts that keep him up at night sometimes, and he wouldn't burden anyone else with them if he didn't have to.

As he turned back onto the highway towards home, the two of them lapsed into a comfortable silence. At least until Parker reached over and turned the radio on. As a familiar guitar solo blasted from the rock station, a look of excitement crossed her face. She sat up straight, air strumming the remaining beats of the solo. _Oh no._

"Parker, no, come on. Not this song." He reached for the radio dial but she smacked his hand away.

"So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye!"

"Parker, please, for the love of—"

"So you think you can love me and leave me to die!"

Nate resigned himself to his fate, thanking the heavens that at least the song was almost over.

"Oooohhhhh baby! Can't do this to me baby!"

Nate groaned.

"I just gotta get out! Just gotta get right out of here!"

* * *

><p>Fifteen minutes later he was pulling back into the parking garage under his building, fatigue had settled over him like a wet blanket, making his movements slow and sluggish. Parker had slumped over in her seat, dozing on and off. She perked up when she felt the car stop and looked around.<p>

"You didn't drive me to my place?"

"It's three in the morning, I don't want to drive across town." And he wanted her nearby in case she became inclined to run again. He was pretty sure the danger had passed, but he wanted to be sure. "You can sleep on my couch."

She shrugged her agreement and got out of the car when he did. He grabbed her duffel bag from the back seat and slung it over his shoulder, noting the clinking sound it made.

"Nate?" she said, her voice joining their footsteps in echoing across the empty garage. "Can you not tell the others about this?"

"It'll be our secret."

"Thanks."

He shifted the bag on his shoulder to a more comfortable position, and it clinked again. "What do you have in this thing?"

"Mostly just loot," she said, "And cash. You know, the essentials."

"Right," he said, shaking his head in disbelief.


End file.
